Mudding Party

Last weekend we made the drive down to Fillmore to help my parents do some mudding in their new garage. Two of my brothers and their wives came too, and it turned out to be a great family get-together. As per tradition, we spent a lot of our time playing board games. We did spend some time working in the garage, and ended up with the first layer all taped and mudded, and even did a layer in the workshop area above the garage.

I must admit that Spencer and my dad did the majority of the work. Spencer is a very hard worker, and when he starts a project, he likes to keep working until it is finished.


Once my brothers got out of bed, they used their incredible to height to get the ceiling done.


My mom and I did most of the taping, and then I divided my time between trying to stay warm, helping with the mudding, and keeping track of Jack. Oh, and I also played a little "avoid the hanging tennis ball" with my brother Michael. I think I had the clear advantage, as I am about a foot shorter than he is!


Our dog Jack LOVES going to Fillmore because he gets to wander the yard and neighborhood chasing cats and searching for food. He must have found a lot of food scraps on Saturday because when we drove back up to Salt Lake that night, Jack got rid of all the extra food on our carpet. Not a fun mess to clean, and I am eternally grateful to Spencer for his willingness to clean that mess on his own! And you should all be eternally grateful to me for not posting pictures of the mess on our blog!

Say What??

"Teacher, she just said the 's' word!"

I can't tell you how many times I hear that sentence at school. Now the tricky thing is, in first grade there are many 's' words. Here are a few: stupid, shut up, sex, ...

Speaking of sex, a few years ago I was talking to my class about similarities and differences. I had a boy and a girl come to the front of the room, and the class raised their hands and pointed out things that were the same or different between the two. My really smart boy raised his hand and said, "they're different sexes." Of course, no other first grader knows that sex can be another name for gender (or even know what gender means!) so the room filled up with giggles and whispering. I then had to explain that sex can mean male or female. I often wonder how many first graders went home that day and said, "We learned what sex means!"

Now, back to first grade cuss words. Here's one I heard the other day that is new to me: the 'w' word! I had to ask the boy who was tattling to tell me what the 'w' word stands for, and he meekly whispered in my ear, "whatever." Oh. I did not know that was a bad word. Whatev... I mean, okay.

It is nice to know that there is still some innocence in the world. Last year, a boy came in from recess with the tattling look. If you have been around children at all, you will recognize the tattling look. Their eyes are open wide, a mix of surprise and concern on their little faces, their mouth half open, with their index finger pointed in the general direction of the culprit. Anyway, this boy came in and said, "Teacher, I had to call this other boy a retard! I just had to! He was going around calling other kids affols!" Me - "Calling other kids what?" Boy - "affols!" At this point, I realize that the boy initially doing the name calling either had a lisp, or the boy in my class was not hearing clearly. At any rate, "affol" was actually a different word, a true cuss word. It just happened to be a cuss word that this innocent little boy had never heard.

So now, when a girl comes up to say, "he just said the 'f' word!" I can calmly react with the knowledge that she is probably referring to fart.